Reviewed by:

• Shane by Karen Zacarías
• Robert Hubbard

Revising beloved classics to adjust for changing cultural mores may inspire antipathy from audience members nostalgically invested in the original. But what if the revisions come from a place of affection rather than derision?

Jack Schaefer published his young adult novel Shane in 1949. By 1953, Hollywood had turned Schaefer’s novel about a wandering gunslinger in search of redemption into a film that defined the US western for generations. While Shane maintains its status as a touchstone of rugged US individualism and white frontier mythology, no serious historian would stand by the historicity of Schaefer’s allegory. Indeed, Schaefer’s popular, pulpy novel with its homogeneous cast of characters and naive attitudes toward western expansion probably reveals more about the 1950s than the 1880s.

As a sixth grader in a Boston public school, Karen Zacarías read Shane and fell in love. The story about an insecure family making their way in an inhospitable new land spoke to young Zacarías’s life experience as an immigrant from Mexico. After becoming an accomplished playwright decades later, Zacarías revisited her childhood crush. The result is an alluring melodramatic hybrid. Zacarías infuses the original story with diversity and accountability while simultaneously enriching the theatricality of the western genre and enhancing the essential themes of Schaefer’s novel.

Zacarías’s adjustments lend the source text both historical authenticity and needed character development. In a note printed in the program, dramaturg Tatiana Godfrey observes that “[b]y the end of the 1800s, about a quarter of all cowboys were Black and an even larger percentage were of Mexican descent.” Fittingly, Zacarías makes the mysterious title character (William DeMeritt) a Black cowboy. Flashes of added exposition reveal Shane to be the son of a plantation owner who raped his enslaved mother. Ambiguous, oblique references that suggest his biological father suffe ed an unexplained and horrible death add depth and intrigue to Shane’s mysterious past.

The Starrett family also receives a racial makeover. In Zacarías’s reimagining, patriarch Joe Starrett (Ricardo Chavira) has a Mexican mother but inherits his Anglo surname from his white father. As an adult, Joe experiences racial discrimination while working in a mine in New Mexico. It is there, we learn, that he falls in love and marries Marian (Gabriela Fernandez-Coffey). Marian had recently become “American” and homeless when her Mexican family’s land was ceded to the United States after the Spanish-American War. Together, the family rode to Wyoming in search of their American dream. Their Latino son, Roberto (Juan Arturo), goes by “Bobby” and serves as the play’s narrator, as he does in Schaefer’s novel. These considerable modifications to the Starretts’ backstory intensify the dramatic conflict by adding a racial dynamic to their looming battle with white cattle baron Luke Fletcher (Bill McCallum), who strives throughout the play to steal the family’s claim.

Grant Goodman (Stark Wilson) and William DeMeritt (Shane) in Shane. (Photo: Dan Norman.)

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Ricardo Chavira (Joe Starrett), Gabriela Fernandez-Coffey (Marian Starrett), Shayna Jackson (Winona Stephens), Bill McCallum (Luke Fletcher), and Juan Arturo (Roberto “Bobby” Starrett) in Shane. (Photo: Dan Norman.)

The moral purity of settlers “claiming” their stake on the Wyoming frontier also receives scrutiny. To counter the novel’s unexamined glorification of manifest destiny, Zacarías invents the Indigenous character Winona Stephens (Shayna Jackson, Cree/Dakota) out of whole cloth. Winona first appears beside Fletcher in a scene in which she attempts to negotiate a contract for cattle to feed her people. In a revealing monologue, we learn that her tribe was recently relegated to a reservation in the Dakota Territory. Wise to Fletcher’s nefarious double-dealings, Winona privately warns Marian Starrett that “[h]e will steal this land from you just like you stole this land from us,” fully cognizant of the irony. Zacarías’s decision to inject Winona into the climactic...

 审阅者：

• 
  谢恩（Karen Zacarías）
•  罗伯特·哈伯德

修改深受人们喜爱的经典作品以适应不断变化的文化习俗，可能会激起怀念原作的观众的反感。但如果这些修改是出于喜爱而不是嘲笑呢？

杰克·谢弗 (Jack Schaefer) 于 1949 年出版了他的青年小说《肖恩》(Shane)。到 1953 年，好莱坞将谢弗的小说改编为一部定义了几代人的美国西部片的电影。虽然肖恩保持着美国个人主义和白人边疆神话试金石的地位，但没有哪个严肃的历史学家会支持谢弗寓言的历史真实性。事实上，谢弗这部广受欢迎的低俗小说以其同质的人物形象和对西方扩张的天真态度，可能更多地揭示了 1950 年代而不是 1880 年代。

当凯伦·扎卡里亚斯在波士顿公立学校读六年级时，她读了《肖恩》并坠入爱河。这个故事讲述了一个没有安全感的家庭在一片荒凉的新土地上艰难前行的故事，讲述了年轻的扎卡里亚斯作为墨西哥移民的生活经历。几十年后成为一名出色的剧作家后，扎卡里亚斯重新审视了她童年的迷恋。结果是一个诱人的情节剧混合体。萨卡里亚斯为原著故事注入了多样性和责任感，同时丰富了西部类型的戏剧性并增强了谢弗小说的基本主题。

萨卡里亚斯的调整赋予了源文本历史真实性和所需的人物发展。在节目中印制的注释中，剧作家塔蒂亚娜·戈弗雷 (Tatiana Godfrey) 指出，“到 1800 年代末，大约四分之一的牛仔是黑人，更大比例是墨西哥血统。”萨卡里亚斯恰如其分地让神秘的主角（威廉·德梅里特饰）成为一名黑人牛仔。额外的解释显示肖恩是一个种植园主的儿子，他强奸了他被奴役的母亲。含糊、间接的暗示表明他的亲生父亲遭受了不明原因的可怕死亡，这为谢恩的神秘过去增添了深度和阴谋。

斯塔雷特家族也进行了种族改造。在萨卡里亚斯的重新想象中，族长乔·斯塔雷特（里卡多·查维拉饰）的母亲是墨西哥人，但他从白人父亲那里继承了盎格鲁姓氏。成年后，乔在新墨西哥州的一个矿井工作时经历了种族歧视。我们得知，正是在那里，他坠入爱河并与玛丽安（加布里埃拉·费尔南德斯-科菲饰）结婚。美西战争后，玛丽安墨西哥家族的土地被割让给美国，玛丽安最近成了“美国人”，无家可归。一家人一起骑车前往怀俄明州寻找他们的美国梦。他们的拉丁裔儿子罗伯托（胡安·阿图罗饰）被称为“鲍比”，并担任该剧的旁白，就像他在谢弗小说中所做的那样。对斯塔雷特家族背景故事的巨大修改，为他们与白牛大亨卢克·弗莱彻（比尔·麦卡勒姆饰）迫在眉睫的战斗增添了种族动态，加剧了戏剧性的冲突。卢克·弗莱彻在整部剧中都在努力窃取家族的所有权。

《肖恩》中的格兰特·古德曼（斯塔克·威尔逊饰）和威廉·德梅里特（肖恩饰）。 （照片：丹·诺曼。）

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《肖恩》中的里卡多·查维拉（乔·斯塔雷特饰）、加布里埃拉·费尔南德斯-科菲（玛丽安·斯塔雷特饰）、谢娜·杰克逊（薇诺娜·斯蒂芬斯饰）、比尔·麦卡勒姆（卢克·弗莱彻饰）和胡安·阿图罗（罗伯托·“鲍比”·斯塔雷特饰）。 （照片：丹·诺曼。）

“声称”拥有怀俄明州边境利益的定居者的道德纯洁性也受到审查。为了反驳小说对天命的未经审查的颂扬，萨卡里亚斯完全虚构了原住民角色薇诺娜·斯蒂芬斯（谢娜·杰克逊，克里族/达科他州）。薇诺娜第一次出现在弗莱彻身边，是在她试图谈判一份牛群合同来养活她的人民的场景中。在一段发人深省的独白中，我们了解到她的部落最近被降级到达科他领地的保留地。对于弗莱彻邪恶的两面派行为，薇诺娜私下警告玛丽安·斯塔雷特，“他会从你手中偷走这片土地，就像你从我们手中偷走这片土地一样”，她充分意识到其中的讽刺意味。萨卡里亚斯决定让薇诺娜进入高潮……